Ghost, an open-source alternative to Substack's newsletter platform, is looking to join fediverse, a social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and most recently Instagram Threads . According to a post from Ghost founder John O'Nolan, the company, which is organized as a non-profit organization, will federate Ghost on his ActivityPub, his social networking protocol that powers the Fedverse. It is said that they are considering it.
O'Nolan said the most requested feature over the past few years has been software federation. “It seems like there are a lot of potential ways to make it happen. Want to know how you want it to work?” he asked in his Threads post. This post was syndicated to Mastodon through Threads' own integration with his ActivityPub.
The survey asks users if they use an ActivityPub platform, such as Mastodon or Threads, and how they expect it to work in Ghost if ActivityPub functionality is added. We also ask how federation benefits individual Ghost users. Survey respondents will be asked to optionally provide an email address if they wish to be contacted for further feedback.
While the launch of the investigation does not necessarily guarantee Ghost's commitment to the Federation, it is another sign of the broader restructuring of the web currently underway.
After billionaire Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, online users are experiencing the downside of placing their trust in a centralized platform. The ownership change saw Twitter revise its ethics and long-term ambitions, overhauling it into a different type of platform called X. (Musk wants X to be an “everything” app for transactions, creator content, video, shopping, etc., with a more liberal role when it comes to content moderation.)
For those dissatisfied with Mr. Musk's changes, having a portable social networking identity suddenly seemed like a more valuable idea. This means that if you don't like the way Mastodon servers (or other federation services) operate, you can choose your profile and move elsewhere, taking your followers with you.
However, with Ghost, the idea is to federate the accounts of writers who use Ghost to publish content. Their posts are visible on the web and to newsletter subscribers, and can also exist in the Fediverse, where others can read, like, and respond to them from their favorite apps. You can These replies can potentially be syndicated to Ghost, where they can exist as comments.
Assuming Ghost takes this approach, it will be similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub after acquiring the ActivityPub blogging plugin. When enabled, apps like Mastodon and other users in the Fediverse can follow your WordPress blog and receive replies as comments on your site.
After seeing O'Nolan's post, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput reached out to help integrate ActivityPub, and O'Nolan accepted.
Ghost has been gaining attention in recent months as a Substack rival, as some people are running away from X. Opinions differ on how the platform should be managed. Substack is committed to promoting free speech, much like Musk does with X, but as The Atlantic detailed late last year, it also extends to the use of its platform by pro-Nazi publications connected.
As a result, one of Substack's most prominent writers, Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack and moved to Ghost instead.
“I don't know of any major consumer internet platform in the United States that doesn't explicitly prohibit glorifying Nazi hate speech, much less allow Nazis to set up shop and start selling subscriptions. There are no other platforms out there that are even more welcoming to doing so,” Newton wrote at the time.
In addition to Newton, other notable Ghost users include 404Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota's The Lever, and Tangle, to name a few.
To date, Ghost has been installed more than 3 million times, which would be a healthy addition to the broader Fediverse and its total user base of around 13 million+ (of which around 1.5 million are active each month). (Threads is not yet fully integrated with ActivityPub, so this figure does not include his more than 130 million monthly active users.)